Ecosystem expands as ISVs offer modules that fill in missing gaps Like a snowball rolling downhill, the software-as-a-service platform is gaining in size and depth as vendors continue to add on more and more components to the core hosted application.This week, Nsite, a business process automation vendor, will unveil Nsite 4.5, a bidirectional quote-to-fulfillment Web service that will plug in to hosted CRM applications, in particular for Siebel OnDemand and Salesforce.com offerings.The Web service module will automate a CRM process called quote approval that in most instances in the enterprise is still manual. “In the quote stage you do a lot of nonstandard pricing and discounts. Typically it is done with spreadsheets or walking around to get approvals,” noted Rosie Hausler, vice president of marketing at Nsite.The Nsite process will allow users to drive the initial set of workflows, capture the workflow, and learn.Although the Nsite offering may fill a gap now missing from most hosted CRM applications, its real value lies elsewhere, according to Denis Pombriant, a lead analyst at Beagle Research. “The real interesting part of this is that they have technology that glues together any business process. The capability of taking disparate systems and creating process flows between systems using this technology is making it possible to integrate business processes. This is very valuable,” Pombriant said.Bob Jandro, president and CEO of Nsite, said the quote module is just the beginning. Next in the services area will be a business process for “milestone signoff,” Jandro said.The ecosystem around hosted applications is building. Sheryl Kingstone, a program analyst with Yankee Group, noted that the kinds of companies that use hosted applications such as Salesforce and Siebel OnDemand don’t want to build these types of modules themselves. “They want something quick and easy. They are going to software-as-a-service model because it is out of the box and easy,” Kingstone said.Nsite’s Jandro believes that at least for the foreseeable future enterprise-level companies are looking to get additional value out of their current software and that companies are looking for ways to enhance what they have by putting process extensions to an application area, Jandro said.“There are no big white spaces left in the enterprise,” Jandro said. The Nsite 4.5 module is priced at $20 per user, per month. Software Development